POLICE BRUTALITY IN IRELAND
Fisher, Desmond
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 EMBARRASSING ALLEGATIONS POLICE BRUTALITY IN IRELAND The Irish Government has been seriously embarrassed by allegations of brutality by a section of the national...
...This extended from 48 hours to 7 days the time for which a suspect could be held without charge...
...He disclosed that in the past two years, the Garda authorities had investigated 58 complaints of assault by police on persons in custody...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 EMBARRASSING ALLEGATIONS POLICE BRUTALITY IN IRELAND The Irish Government has been seriously embarrassed by allegations of brutality by a section of the national police force, the Garda Siochana (Guardians of the Peace...
...But, oh, that detachment, that impolite Aloofness when I was its prot6g...
...Machined in deadly earnest, not for play, It was primitive, I its proselyte...
...Or is that now romantic second-sight...
...the assassination of the British Ambassador, Mr...
...Tiede Herrema...
...According to the reporters, this period enabled the "heavy gang" to beat up their detainees in the early days of arrest and allow the bruises to be cleared up before their release...
...But most people have been content to keep silent on the ground that the police force is generally respectable and if there was occasional brutality it was probably justified...
...They took away a young man for questioning and as they were driving off a bottle was dropped on the roof of their car...
...The allegations were particularly embarrassing because they hit the headlines at the exact time that Ireland was arraigning Britain before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France...
...in weight and two toenails by having his feet stamped on during a four-day detention...
...Government Ministers and spokesmen have regarded all allegations of brutality as propaganda by subversives and their fellowtravelers or dupes to discredit the police force and embarrass the government politically...
...Another woman alleged that when she tried to visit her gaoled husband she was forced to strip naked...
...Remembering, I give myself a fright And the plane a pat, which still is to say There was in danger desperate delight...
...Some degree of public concern about such suspected police brutality has existed for years in Ireland...
...being warned that they would be "broken" before the end of the 7-day detention period or released and rearrested immediately...
...If the agency entrusted with the collection of that evidence is itself the defendant, how...
...Grounded now, hangered here, she was my rite...
...The official attitude to such charges has consistently been that the internal disciplinary code in the police force is a safeguard against brutality and all complaints 15 April 1977:230 are investigated by the police themselves or can be made the subject of legal action...
...being told lies about their legal fights...
...DIESMOlqD FISHER (Desmond Fisher, author and former editor ot the London Catholic Herald and now Director of Broadcasting Developments /or Radio Telefis Eireann, with this issue becomes Commonweal's regular correspondent in Ireland...
...The charges included allegations that interrogation methods used on internees, mainly Catholics, in Northern Ireland constituted torture...
...However, only a matter of days before the Irish Times articles appeared, the Minister for Justice, Mr...
...Commonweal: 2:11...
...Another man was, as an Irish Times reporter puts it, "arrested, freed, re-arrested, freed, arrested again, finally acquitted," while another man claimed to have lost 14 lbs...
...British politicians and newspapers hit on the allegation as showing that Ireland was operating two standards---one for export and the other for internal national purposes...
...Among the methods said to be used were physical ill-treatment and psychological techniques of the kind used by British security forces in Northern Ireland...
...Among the allegations made was one by a young Northern Ireland woman, living in Dublin, who was five months pregnant when five plainclothes police called at her flat last Spring...
...the kidnapping of the Dutch industrialist, Dr...
...He refused, at this time at least, to set up an independent investigation tribunal into allegations of brutality against the police but did not rule such a tribunal out if the courts should prove inadequate...
...The Dublin branch of the Association for Legal Justice said it had investigated 40 cases in the past 12 months and considered 30 as warranting court intervention...
...Four men from County Tipperary were arrested and brought to a local police station, where, they later alleged, they were beaten up, deprived of sleep and subjected to psychological pressures...
...then can the other party be assured of fair play...
...Cooney denied the existence of a Garda squad specializing in interrogation and warned that any police officer using the methods alleged would be dealt with...
...She claifi~ed the police came back and three of them caught her by the hair and swung her round, punched and kicked her several times, dragged her to the car and took her to the police station...
...A man, freed because the Court found he had been held in unlawful custody, said he had been beaten up and then broken mentally by being shut up in a locker by police who knew he suffered from claustrophobia...
...The Court is expected to rule on the charges this year...
...These included being locked in curtained rooms with constant electric light to produce disorientation...
...Several solicitors were quoted as saying that they had awaiting court hearing a total of hundreds of legal actions alleging brutality against the police...
...With the publication of the Irish Times articles, further disquieting aspects of the matter came to light...
...The country's leading daily newspape:, the 70,000-circulation Irish Times, has published a series of articles quoting statements from suspects that they were tortured in various ways by a so-c.a]led "heavy gang" of plainclothes detectives within the police force...
...As a result, 22 cases were referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions who instituted charges in 8 cases, all of which were dismissed in the courts...
...We are survivors to a duller day...
...Recent events like...
...In the Dail (Lower House) on February 17, Mr...
...It was primitive, I its proselyte...
...But enough public misgivings have been aroused to ensure that the practice, if it existed, will cease and that the Irish police force will not allow what, in general, has been their good record to be spotted because of the particular difficulties at this time...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 RICHARD SNYDER TRE AGING POET, ON A READING TRIP TO DAYTON, VISITS TIlE AIR FORCE MUSEUM AND DISCOVEI~ TIlERE A PLANE HE ONCE FLEW There was in danger desperate delight When I in that ship was a stowaway...
...There was in danger desperate delight Of high, blue pasture through which to excite By joystick whip a racing runaway...
...A team of three reporters, after a six-week enquiry, wrote that the brutality had become routine practice especially since the introduction in October 1976 of the Emergency Powers Act...
...Besides being beaten, forced to stand with arms and legs outstretched against a wall for hours on end and deprived of food and water for long periods, the suspects were also alleged to have been subjected to psychological pressures...
...One of the men jumped out a first-floor window in what he said was an effort to commit suicide, seriously injuring himself...
...It was primitive, I its proselyte...
...The Irish Times articles were based on interviews with the alleged victims, their lawyers, doctors and social workers and also with individual police officers said to be concerned about the practices...
...It was primitive, I its proselyte...
...Patrick Cooney, whose government department administers the police force, had himself warned police recruits not to use "extralegal" methods to serve convictions...
...An event early in February brought public anxiety to a head, however...
...The Minister's reply, however, will probably take the issue off the boil for the moment...
...There was in danger desperate delight...
...Christopher Ewart-Biggs and his secretary, Miss Judith Cooke, and the murder of a policeman, Garda Michael Clerkin, have all added to the widespread public feeling that the State itself was threatened and that a law-and-order crack-down on the IRA was necessary, involving perhaps "short-cut" methods of securing convictions...
...Unabashed by the Minister's statement, the Irish Times said editorially next day that the courts could only adjudicate on the basis of evidence put before them...
Vol. 104 • April 1977 • No. 8
